hms iron duke

Friday, 31 January 2014

Alphen,
Netherlands. 31 January.On Wednesday
evening I was sitting in the Sky Team business class lounge at Washington’s
Dulles Airport with a senior French colleague and friend waiting for my KLM
flight back to Amsterdam.We had chewed
the cud about a range of matters strategic pertinent to our respective countries.It was a discussion that was just about as
Franco-British as one can get during which he made a comment which for me sums
up the Paris view of their London counterparts.

The
specific issue at hand was Franco-British nuclear co-operation.My point was that as I could not envisage a
scenario in which one country would use nuclear weapons and the other not London and Paris should find a way to co-operate more deeply.Surely, I opined, we could at least alternate
patrols of French and British ballistic missile submarines at times of peace to
reduce wear and tear?British and French
nuclear submarines patrol just about the same bits of sea and have almost
identical targets.

His response
was to say that whenever France had proposed deeper co-operation the British
had backed away.Nothing too French you
might assume in that apart from precisely that – the assumption.To Paris Franco-British co-operation starts
from an assumption that France sets the agenda and it is up to the British to
respond.

For Paris that
is how it should be. It is the job of French negotiators to get as much for France
as is possible in any negotiation.And,
they are very good at it.The real
tragedy is that London lets Paris get away with it.Indeed, during my years living and working in
Paris I saw repeated examples of supine British officials apologising privately
for London’s inability to give France all and everything it wants.

Now, I know
some senior British officials will read this and say that if I was in the room
I would realise how hard they fight for this position or that.That is not my point and in any case I tend
to know what goes on in the room.British
negotiators are master tacticians able and willing to gain or squeeze advantage
from the hopeless positions bequeathed to them by hopeless political masters.London’s
political culture is now so defensive that London invariably surrenders the
strategic high ground to France from the outset.

Since
Britain retreated from the world in the 1960s British ‘strategy’ has been the
search for common ground between the US, French and German position on all and
anything.This has been compounded by Planet
Whitehall which believes Britain should be in the Euro and at the heart of the
EU whatever price Germany and France demand.The result is that London no longer thinks strategically for itself and
is constantly on the negotiating defensive.

This game
will be played out today at the Franco-British pub lunch.Downing Street spin has it that PR-Meister
Cameron is going to forcefully try to convince President Hollande of the need
for EU reform.However, Cameron has
already said he will support Britain’s EU membership even if France (and more
importantly Germany) says ‘non’, as the Élysee has also already said it will.The warm beer conversation will thus be short.Dave: “I want to reform the EU so that it becomes
more competitive, more democratic and power is handed back to capitals”.Francois, “Non!”Dave, “OK then”.

After the meeting
the Downing Street Press Machine will talk of “substantive discussions” and “real
progress”.Strategy-free Dave, who has
clearly been captured by his euro-friendly officials, will be told by the Mandarins
present that by preventing summit failure he conducted a master-class in
diplomacy.The confusion of strategy, politics
and diplomacy is the very essence of Britain’s contemporary weakness.

In fact,
the French position is also as weak today as at any time since the founding of the
EU.The Franco-German axis is hollow to
the point of empty, France is far more broke than Britain,Merkel and Hollande do not get on and the
prospect of Britain leaving the EU should give London negotiating leverage if
only the people do the negotiating believed in the possibility.Not only do they not believe in Britain leaving
the EU but behind the scenes they are telling the French and others that they will
do all they can to prevent it.

London
should seize what is an historic moment and tell Paris that whilst the future
Franco-British strategic relationship is vital - and it is - Paris must work with London if
France really wants Britain to stay in the EU and help balance Germany.Right now, there is not the slightest
incentive for Paris to do anything other than say ‘non’!Indeed, as far as the French are concerned
Cameron will either cave in (likely) or Labour will win in 2015 (quite possible) and offer to
hand over even more sovereignty to Brussels.

Alphen,
Netherlands. 31 January.Today is the
Franco-British pub lunch, sorry, summit at which defence, energy, space and of course Europe will be discussed.Therefore, in honour of Prime Minister David Cameron’s infliction of an
English pub lunch and a pint of that most venerable of beers Hook Norton on an
unsuspecting French President Hollande today’s blog is devoted to an extract
from my new book Little Britain:
Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power (www.amazon.com).

“The
November 2010 Franco-British Defence and Security Co-operation Treaty and air operations
over Libya in 2011 confirmed the importance of the Franco-British strategic
relationship.London and Paris share a
classical state-to-state strategic defence relationship.However, Britain’s strategic relationship
with France is important and complex in equal measure.That said it must be of concern to London
that Paris was less than complementary about the support it received from
Britain for their Mali intervention, even though France seems to have conveniently
forgotten France’s unwillingness to support the British where it mattered in
Afghanistan.

For all those irritations it is
hard to over-state the importance of the relationship.Indeed, if the strategic utility of NATO
depends to a very great extent on Britain’s strategic relationship with the
Americans the future of European defence is dependent on the Franco-British
relationship. A close strategic partnership with France is clearly in the interest
of both countries because of the quality of their respective armed forces.Recent French operations in 2013 have
confirmed that.The challenge Paris
faced when four thousand French troops arrived in Mali in February was
complicated to say the least.Tuaregs
had taken control of northern Mali and sought separation.They were supported by a a particularly nasty
bunch of Islamists (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Mujao) who had
profited (literally) from the chaos in neighbouring Libya.To make things worse the Malian Army, or what
was left of it, was in meltdown and the country’s political system with it….

With the conclusion of the first
phase of the crisis the political battle for Mali is still to be won.And, of course, Serval has not stabilised the
Sahel as a whole, partly because the West thinks states, Islamists think
peoples and not too many strategic implications should be read into
Serval.However, the French military
success in Mali should not be under-estimated.Mali is a big and desolate place and as an example of statecraft France
has every right to be proud of Serval whatever happens next, wherever it
happens.

The
lesson for Britain is clear.Britain and
France must together work to build on the putative Combined Joint Expeditionary
Force (CJEF) concept and collaborate to being real military substance to both
NATO 2020 and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The need is
pressing.As the failed December 2013 EU
defence summit demonstrated the European defence effort is woefully inadequate
and can only resolved by either structural increases in defence expenditure
(unlikely) and/or much greater unity of strategic effort and purpose leading to
deep defence synergy (necessary).For
some of the smaller NATO and EU members that will mean defence integration that
begins in the tail but reaches towards the teeth end of armed forces
(desperate).Fifteen years on from the
St Malo Declaration Britain again must seek common strategic cause with France.

The
relationship with France will also be vital in rendering NATO fit for
purpose.However, for France to overcome
its latent suspicions of NATO, Paris will expect deeper British political
investment in CSDP.One aspect of that
relationship will be British support for the strengthening of the EU as a
homeland security hub across the European security space.Indeed, if NATO is once again to become the
strategic military sword and shield of the Euro-Atlantic Community, the EU
should transform itself into a security hub better able to provide civilian
protection of the European homeland through improved and enhanced
resiliency.The EU must also provide a
credible political option for leaders so that European forces can be used
effectively under a European flag.This
would better enable political leaders to feel confident in taking pro-active
offensive action together when deemed necessary.The flag a force operates under is almost as
important as the force deployed in a complex place where politics and
insecurity are one and the same”.

As for the pub lunch it is perhaps reflective of the political
problems the relationship faces that today’s summit is the first time that such
an event has taken place in two years.The strategic logic for co-operation is overwhelming.However, a political gulf still exists
between the two countries over the future orientation and direction of the
European Union.Nothing that takes place
today in an Oxfordshire pub is likely to change that.

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

Washington DC, 29
January. “Our alliance with Europe is the strongest the world has ever known”.As President Obama delivered his fifth State
of the Union address the failing snow gave Washington a sense of unusual
calm.As the President spoke I was at a
private dinner with General Jean-Paul Paloméros, NATO’s Supreme Allied
Commander Transformation just a few hundred metres/yards from the Capitol.Yesterday I discussed NATO with senior
Americans and Europeans in preparation for the September NATO summit in Britain.What is the state of the Alliance?

In September 2012 in a
speech in Latvia I established for NATO the Riga Test which sets a benchmark
for the Alliance; how safe do Rigans feel?In his address President Obama said, “Our security cannot depend on our
military alone”.He is of course
right.However, security in the
twenty-first century will be equally reliant on strong and credible North
American and European militaries backed by political and strategic unity of
purpose generated by a strong Alliance.

There was the now usual
nonsense from the European elitist Left.Europeans no longer trust or need America.NATO will not die but will fade away.The future of Europe is the EU.In fact, with EU Europeans now spending an
average of 1.36% of GDP per annum on defence (and doing it very badly) Europe
is more not less reliant on an over-pressed America. Too often too many in Europe’s elite act like security
junkies who are in denial about their addiction to free-riding.

Back in the real world one
senior American called NATO’s September summit “a genuflection moment”.Yes, we can continue down the path of
cynicism and allow our collective war fatigue and depression to set what passes
for ‘strategy’.Yes, President Obama is
right; a whole range of influence tools will indeed be needed to manage global
security and America will need alliances with partners the world over.Yes, there are a range of issues which NATO
should not seek to engage, such as climate change.And yes a Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership will be equally important.

For all that Alliance leaders
must seize the moment and the opportunity September offers at what will be NATO’s first
truly strategic summit of the century unfettered by operational pressures.If our leaders rise to the occasion and set
the course towards a future transformative Alliance then the summit will
succeed.If instead they tick the box of
pretend success in Afghanistan then the summit will fail the people of the
Alliance and indeed their future.

For that to
happen the leaders of my own battered old country who will host the summit must
rise above their obsession with the politics of the moment and as US Secretary
of State Dean Rusk once said, “For God’s sake act like Britain”.I have been struck on this visit by the lack
of respect senior Americans have for Britain and the sacrifice of my own men
and women under arms in support of America.I have also been struck by the failure of British diplomacy to convince
Washington of Britain’s determination to be a serious ally in a dangerous
world.

Why does this
matter?Seventy years after D-Day the Alliance
is still founded on the US-UK strategic relationship and that in turn needs a
strong Britain.Yes, France, Germany and
other Europeans are vital US allies but without a strong Britain the very cornerstone
of the Alliance is weak. Equally, NATO itself
must understand its position in the West, no longer a place but an idea, and
in Washington which leads a changing America.To do that the Alliance must aspire again to be essential to Americans
in an American-centred world-wide security web.

However, America must
also change tack.The most moving moment
in the State of the Union address was the rightful tribute President Obama paid to disabled
Veteran and US Ranger Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg. There are Sergeant Remsburgs across the Alliance
and beyond struggling to build a life beyond sacrifice.Make no mistake these young men and women
left their homes from Riga to the Rhondda to go and fight in support of America.Americans need to understand that and make a
much greater effort to acknowledge their sacrifice too.

“Nothing worth
achieving in life is easy”, President Obama opined.As in life so in strategy.With a world getting more military not less,
a world with dangerous frictions many on Europe’s doorstep the need for a
strong Alliance is again strategically self-evident.Call me old-fashioned, and I know some of you
will, but the world is a safer place when the West is strong and at the centre
of a strong West is a strong Alliance.

Getting NATO through
strategic rehab will not be easy but it starts in Wales where leaders must openly
and publicly retake their vows to each other, our Alliance and of course the
good people of Riga.

Monday, 27 January 2014

Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. 27
January.I am sitting in the lounge at
Schiphol Airport en route to Washington to speak at the CSIS-NATO Transatlantic Forum on the
future of the Alliance.This is
fortuitous…for NATO and the Americans.It
is about time Washington was again subjected to the Yorkshire world view. In
the way these things are done in London the Ministry of Defence last week ‘leaked’
a report. It is not clear if this was an
official or not-so-official leak but the message was interesting and speaks
volumes about Britain and the wider West’s future military posture.

The report suggests
that Britain’s ever-expanding kaleidoscope of ethnic minorities have a problem with
British troops tromping around their former/current homelands in the way
British troops tromp.Therefore, the
report suggests, future British operations will no longer be based on the kind
of big footprint one saw in Afghanistan and Iraq.

To be frank this is one
British change that cannot be pinned on immigration.The massive bulk of the population, most
senior officers and even strategy wonks like your faithful Blogonaut find it
difficult to see how sending a small force a long way for a long time into a
hopelessly complex political space makes strategic sense.This is simply another of those moments when
the common sense of the British people regardless of ethnicity trumps the tortured
policy logic of Planet Whitehall.

In my new book Little
Britain (www.amazon.com) my chapter on
Britain’s Future Force calls for a radical rethink about the role and nature of
force and its relationship with a changing world and changing society.It also informs much of what I am going to
say in Washington about NATO.

By 2050 most serious
analysts (Exxon Mobil, CSIS, International Energy Authority, Goldman Sachs and
Citibank) foresee a major shift in power from west to east.To my mind it is exaggerated but it does at least
point to a hyper-competitive and instable 21st century.It is a future that will not only see the
littoralisation and urbanisation of the world population but also the emergence
of peer military power competitors. Indeed, the
military expenditures of China, Russia and other powers are burgeoning.

For military planners
this implies a radical assumption check. First, the use of force to change
societies will become almost impossible even if the friction generated by societal
change will increase.Strategic security
and human security will be clearly one and the same.Second, good old-fashioned geopolitics will
make a stunning comeback and with it Machtpolitik
and Realpolitik. Third, technology
will mass-multiply force.However, given
the nature of future operations it will need to be intelligent
force. Fourth, political will and global
stability will inseparable.Europeans
will not assure security by sticking their heads in the Brussels sand and hoping
change beyond Europe ignores change in Europe.

Small Western
militaries in a huge cross-dimensional strategic space will need a single
strategic mind-set overseeing strategic operating practice via connectivity and
interoperability.Given that assumption
the West’s future force will need to be organically-joint and able to reach and
dominate across air, sea, land, cyber and space. And, given the balance to be struck between
strategy, technology, manpower and affordability the core force will need to be
small, intelligent and demonstrably lethal.Equally, the force will need to be strategically and intellectually
interoperable across government, with allies and partners and much more deeply embedded
within society.

Forces that can simply
operate to a very limited extent at the lower end of the conflict spectrum to
the effective exclusion of all else will soon be obsolete – much like the Dutch
military today.Indeed, by sacrificing both
capacity and capability even that limited low-end aim is now unachievable for
the Dutch and many European forces.Rather,
the West’s future force must be built around a tight high-end military
capability that can credibly engage to prevent conflict, to stop conflict and
if needs be act as a strategic conventional deterrent.

By hook or by crook
that is where the British are going – and partly why I wrote the book.The British Future Force will be constructed
around two large aircraft carriers.They
will be central to future task groups that can offer power projection and
political discretion at one and the same time.They will be platforms run by the Royal Navy but from which both the Royal
Air Force and the British Army will operate.
They will also act as force hubs for colaitions. Critically, if the radical new concept of the Reserve Army can be made
to work the Future Force will be plugged into wider society enabling a rapid
surge of capacity if a high-end crisis develops…as it could.

NATO should look hard
at the British experiment.NATO is not
the EU.It is a politically-realist,
hard-edged politico-military alliance built around worse-case scenario planning.Future NATO must therefore be considering how
best to generate and command the West’s future force via a hard-nosed analysis of
the post-2014 world.

Many think the
withdrawal from Afghanistan is the end of NATO’s test.In fact it is just the beginning.

Friday, 24 January 2014

Britain
faces profound strategic choices all of which will demand the generation of
real diplomatic and military power and influence and its intelligent
application in Washington, Europe and the world beyond.Britain’s armed forces will necessarily be at
the core of strategy but will need a sufficiency of high-end military
capabilities to establish Britain’s soft power influence on a hard power
foundation.That is the essential
message of this book.

In
August 2013 General Sir Nick Houghton, the Chief of the British Defence Staff
warned that because of defence cuts Britain needed to “re-calibrate our
expectations” of the global role and capacity of British armed forces.He might well have suggested that Britain as
a whole needed to recalibrate its expectations.It would be almost comforting to think that any such ‘recalibration’
would simply be a short-term reflection of the financial challenges of this
age.Certainly, for the foreseeable
future British governments will have precious little money to spend.

However,
attend any meeting in Whitehall or Westminster and a profound divide becomes
apparent.The bureaucratic elite
believes its task is to manage inevitable decline and a political elite that
seems to revel in a false strategic consciousness that Britain is far more
powerful than it actually is.There is
even a term invented to offer a chimera of strategic respectability – managing
decline.In fact, ‘managing decline’ too
often simply masks a lack of imagination of a political class and a
bureaucratic elite who have for so long seen strategy made elsewhere that they
now take decline for granted.In short,
British strategy has for too long been the fruitless search for common ground
between the American world-view, the French and German European view and the
search thereafter for a political and bureaucratic consensus about which bits
of both to support.

The
retreat from big thinking at the top of Britain’s government is reinforced by
an inability by Britain’s civil service to implement big thinking.Three failures are apparent: an inability of
the civil service to manage big, complex projects successfully; a refusal by
ministers to permit the civil service to think long-term or about big policy issues;
and the politicisation of the civil service.All three contribute to a culture of denial and a refusal to tell
ministers hard facts even when giving guidance.

Such
failings are apparent across government.A September 2013 report by the National Audit Office (NAO) highlighted
the failure of management for an IT programme to support the new system of
so-called Universal Credit. The report highlighted a recurring theme of failure
in the civil service.Problems are
suppressed or denied by a culture that always seeks to protect ministers from
hard truths.When a problem is finally
too great to suppress both ministers and the civil service claim the problem
has been solved only for failure to be admitted long after those responsible
have moved on.Be it IT programmes or
building aircraft carriers a culture of incompetence exists at the heart of
government that has also helped to cripple British national strategy.For a long time Britain’s relative power in
the world could mask such failure but no longer.Indeed, as Britain declines strategy will
become more important not less, but as yet government – both political and
bureaucratic – has proved itself incapable.

The
motivation for writing this book emerged from the cold realisation that the two
essential ‘truisms’ upon which post-war British national strategy is
established are in fact myth.The first
myth concerns the so-called special relationship with the United States.After over ten years of painful sacrifice in
Afghanistan and Iraq my many visits to Washington have demonstrated to me
all-too-clearly that Britain’s relationship with the American is ‘special’ only
in the minds of fifty per cent of London’s elite Establishment, mainly those
responsible for Britain’s defence.One
senior American said to me recently that the relationship is only special if
Britain does not test it.The August
2013 decision by Parliament to block Prime Minister Cameron’s use of British
military forces to punish Syria’s President Assad over the use of chemical
weapons demonstrates this new reality; the special relationship is not what it
used to be.

The
second myth adhered to by the other half of the London elite Establishment is
that Britain can be a leader of what European federalists dub the European
Project.The Eurozone and the
existential crisis it has created, demonstrates once and for all the utter
impracticality and impossibility of Britain playing such a role.Indeed, to do so would in effect mean the
abandonment of Britain’s vital and enduring role in Europe – to balance
power.Not only will neither Germany nor
France ever allow Britain to play such a role as the EU and the Eurozone become
one, over time Britain will be further marginalised.Britain is today in the worst of all
Euro-worlds – paying an exorbitant cost for little or no influence.

Thursday, 23 January 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 23 January. This is Grand Strategy for Dummies (and Economists). No wonder it is called the dismal science. I have just been listening to a leading economist being interviewed in Davos by the BBC - nice work if you can get it. His line was that conflict between China and Japan is impossible because they are economically-interdependent. Let's face it most economists cannot even get predictions right in their own field let alone in mine.

The 'war is impossible between the economically-dependent' argument was shot dead - literally - a century ago in 1914. Much of continental Europe was economically-interdependent at the time but war still broke out. This is because international relations is about so much more than economics. The drivers of systemic change include structural political shift, identity, nationalism and, of course, the domestic political and personal interests and imperatives of hard-pressed elites. This potent and potentially parlous mix is particularly powerful and persuasive in emerging, illiberal states that seek to challenge the world status quo.

During this interview one of the BBC's many strategically-illiterate, air-brain interviewers said she could not understand why China and Japan could possibly have a shooting match over a few small islands (Diaoyu/Senkaku). Der! The conflict between the two great East Asian powers is about for more than the islands. At one level it is about the potentially massive amount of hydrocarbons that lie beneath the islands and at the grand strategic other level it is about the strategic pecking order in what will be the twenty-first century's global security crucible. Where do the BBC find these people?

There is one other question I must pose this morning. Does anyone know what Davos is for and what value if any it adds to anything or anybody?

Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Alphen,
Netherlands. 22 January.From Kiev to
Damascus and beyond liberal ideas of international community are in
retreat.In what is the last remnant of
a once-ancient sea that separated Europe from Africa Lac Leman sits below a
soaring Alp known as the Devil’s Teeth.This rocky statement provides the dramatic backdrop for the Syrian peace
talks which start today in the Swiss lakeside resort of Montreux.The omens are not good.The Syrian opposition had its arm twisted to
attend, those attending seem to have little real influence and a new report
suggests the Syrian regime has murdered at least 11000 detainees. And yet what is at stake in Montreux and Geneva is
not simply the alleviating of the suffering of a wretched people but the very future
of global governance. Is the twenty-first
century going to be some ghastly repeat of the nineteenth century balance of
power or can some semblance of international community be properly created?

The idea of
international community has been around a long-time.In the modern era it can be traced back to
the origins of public international law, the Justinian legal tradition and
Catholic canon law.However, the idea of
international community really gained ground in the immediate aftermath of Europe’s
twentieth century struggles.

The idea of
a rules-based international order reached its zenith with the UN adoption of “Responsibility to Protect” in the wake
of the tragedies in the western Balkans and Rwanda.This flagship of liberal humanitarianism and
human security placed the duty of states to protect the rights of citizens
above state sovereignty.As such ‘R2P’ chimed with a brief moment of optimism
and determination when it seemed the American-led mighty West and its values
would rule supreme.Today, in the wake
of two disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a self-generated economic
disaster and the re-emergence of two illiberal great powers – China and Russia-
the West, its strategy and values and are in open retreat. Worse, the world is steadily slipping back
into a twenty-first century version of Machtpolitik
where might and only might is right.

In Europe
Ukraine’s President Yanukovich snubs overtures by the EU and this morning a pro-EU,
anti-government protester was shot by police.In Minsk Soviet relic Lukashenko clings tenaciously onto power.Three years ago last month Mohammed Bouazizi
consumed his Tunisian life in flame and by so doing started the turmoil that boils across
the Middle East and North Africa.Today,
much of the region teeters dangerously between autocracy and chaos as weak
intolerant regimes cling to power whilst around them and under them people die
in their tens of thousands in the face of oppression and sectarian hatred.

Syria’s
suffering and Ukraine’s freedom is unlikely to be assured until the geopolitics
of both the region and the wider world are resolved. Sadly, the suffering of millions
and the deaths of even hundreds of thousands is in and of itself no longer
sufficient motive for concerted action, precisely because such action could
disturb the new, sensitive regional and global power balances.

Consequently,
a geopolitical fault-line runs from Kiev to Damascus and beyond.On one side of the line Chinese, Russian, Iranian
and the leaders of other illiberal, less-than-democratic and often corrupt
states that see themselves as new power albeit suffused by a very traditional
concept of power and influence.On the
other side of the line they see hand-wringing, flabby, decadent European
liberals who talk the talk of freedom and liberty but who have no intention of
walking the walk overseen by an uncertain America retreating from the world
with its tail between its legs.

If
international community is to be restored and through it the entire edifice of
United Nations re-energised the West must rediscover its strategic mojo.That means political leaders who look up and out
from the trenches of austerity and together demonstrate the necessary vision,
will and means vital to twenty-first century influence.

The new
balance to be struck between Realpolitik
and community is perhaps the last strategic choice the West as the West can
make.In Kiev it is the Kremlin not
Brussels that is dictating events.In
Syria even the removal of Syrian chemical weapons is a Russian plan dictated by
Russian interests.In East Asia China
takes the view that the US is a has-been power lacking the will and soon the
means to challenge Beijing’s nascent hegemony.Privately Japanese leaders share the same concerns.

Winston
Churchill once said that “jaw-jaw is better than war-war” and the Geneva II talks
in and of themselves must be welcomed.However,
such suffering will not be ended if the West retreats into gesture politics.The paradox for Europe and indeed the wider
West is that for ‘international community’ to exist Europeans must rediscover
at least a modicum of Machtpolitik and Americans must rediscover the West.

Monday, 20 January 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 20
January.President Obama said Friday
that, “People around the world should know that the United States is not spying
on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security”.The reforms Obama has ordered of the National
Security Agency and its practices come as Edward Snowden released details of
the Dishfire programme and the collection
by the US of some 200 million text messages daily.Civil rights groups say that Obama’s reforms
go nothing like far enough to protect privacy.Any yet full disclosure would effectively wreck the national security
strategies not just of the US but the UK and other Western democracies.Is a new balance possible between strategy,
politics, privacy and intelligence?

The essential dilemma
that Snowden has highlighted is the enormous gulf in the world views of those
responsible for national security and those not.Just before Christmas I had a conversation with
a senior British officer with responsibility for signals intelligence.He told me that Britain was under daily “massive
and rapacious” cyber-attack from Chinese, Russian and other intelligence agencies
in addition to the very real terrorist threat.

Contrast that
perspective with the world-view of Snowden and his supporters such as Julian
Assange and Glenn Greenwald.They appear
to live in a virtual world of perfect civil liberties and much like 1960s
hippies and ‘free love’ they want information to be unbounded.They are part of Generation X that was
spawned by the borderless-ness of the Internet and information idealism and any
power that constrains information anarchy is an enemy.

That is not to say Western-states
do not have a very real duty of care for the privacy of citizens both their own
and others.And, it could well be that the
NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ crossed privacy thresholds in pursuit of
security.911, the pressing intelligence
needs of the Afghan and Iraq wars and the march of technology brought motive,
opportunity and capability together. Proper and legitimate oversight of such
power is what distinguishes between democracies and non-democracies.

The politics of Obama’s
speech reflect transatlantic tensions over strategy and politics.To hear the likes of German Chancellor Angela
Merkel say on Friday that Germans were “rightfully concerned” by American and
British intelligence practices is a bit rich to say the least. First, German intelligence and its French and
other European counterparts benefit hugely from the data gathering of the NSA
and GCHQ.Second, German and French intelligence
in particular are excellent practitioners of what the information anarchists
regard as dark arts.

The smell of hypocrisy
is emerging from Berlin and not for the first time.It was particularly irritating recently to
see German politicians affecting mock outrage that Britain was trying to
discover Berlin’s policy intentions.As
a British citizen I would be outraged if Britain was not trying to discern
German intentions by all possible means.Germany is Europe’s most powerful state and the decisions it takes on
the future of the EU have the most profound strategic implications for
Britain.Even this weekend the new
German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned David Cameron that some
of his views on the EU were beginning to “affect German interests”.

There is a very real
danger that British Intelligence will be most damaged.London is trapped between an America engaged
in a dark real world and a European political elite obsessed only with the
European order.

At root the cause of
this seemingly endless controversy is the refusal of elites in many Western democracies
to be honest about the dangerous nature of the twenty-first century world.The West failure in Afghanistan and Iraq has
much to do with strategic dissonance between the US and its European
allies.Whilst the US was on a
war-footing much of Europe was determinedly not.Transatlantic strategic dissonance is
reinforced by a European elite culture particularly that tries to lock the
citizen into a false sense of security.This state is most apparent in relation to the Eurozone crisis but it
extends across the security spectrum.

Therefore, by creating
false security the individual citizen is left in a child-like state led to
believe that his or her freedoms are like the air that they breathe.The thousands of men and women working in
intelligence across the West walk daily past their fellow citizens to and fro
work but might as well be on a different planet.The world they engage on behalf of their
citizens is massively different from that perceived by ordinary people and dangerously
and ideologically different from the world of information anarchists such as
Assange, Greenwald and Snowden.

The greatest immediate
threat to the cohesion of the West is breakdown in the balance between
strategy, politics, privacy and intelligence.Indeed, without agreement over a new balance and soon the West as
security actor will cease to exist.

Friday, 17 January 2014

General (Retd.) Sir David
Richards, late Chief of the British Defence Staff

The
British armed forces have been engaged the world over for centuries.In recent years I have had the honour to lead
those armed forces in places as challenging and diverse as East Timor, Sierra
Leone and Afghanistan.As a soldier
leading the army of one of Europe’s and the world’s leading democracies the
importance of national strategy is paramount.In democracies, whilst we may be of influence, it is not soldiers that
decide the role of a state in world affairs and rightly so.From my own experience, in spite of the many
challenges the British armed forces have faced over the past years trying to
bring peace and stability to troubled places, it is Britain’s political and
strategic standing which is the vital and yet unquantifiable quality that is so
often vital to mission success.Britain
is no longer a global power but it remains a country held in high regard the
world over for the length of its international experience and the strategic
wisdom it has gained.

Britain’s
strategic role has not been without controversy, as evidenced by Prime Minister
Cameron expressing deep regret for the massacre of Indian protesters at
Amritsar in 1919.However, overall the
world can be said to be a better place because of Britain and the role it has
played and continues to play.

For
the British, national strategy is not something that historically has been
designed by committee.Strategy has rather
emerged as an evolution of debate between all those charged with great
responsibilities, both within the departments of state engaged daily in
Britain’s foreign and security policy and those without.In the past the ability to make sound
strategic judgements seemed to be part of Whitehall’s DNA and thus not in need
of formulation or categorisation.This
was partly a reflection of Britain’s genuine power in the world and London’s
ability to influence events.After all,
the truly powerful are less in need of strategy.

However,
as Britain has become more modest in terms of both power and ambition it has
had to begin properly considering its vital, essential and general interests
and values in a more systematic and dispassionate light.This has meant some tough decisions that when
seen in the light of history may seem prematurely to signal retreat rather than
reflect the strategic realities of an unstable era and the latent influence of
a still powerful state.That was
certainly the case with the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review which
had to address difficult questions in an especially testing period.

However,
the spirit of Britain’s greatness both past and present was apparent even in
this the toughest of times.All those
charged with considering Britain’s future strategy do so and did so not in the
belief that Britain is about to withdraw from the world but firm in the belief
that with the right use of national resources and the immense network of
influence Britain enjoys the country can, and should, continue to play a
positive and constructive role the world over.

How
Britain plays that role is the purpose of Professor Lindley-French’s book.He examines the balance to be struck between
the civilian and the military applications of power; how process, diplomacy,
force and resource are blended in order to decide appropriate strategies.In reading it I was particularly struck by
the centrality he places on Britain’s role as a champion of international institutions
and the legitimate use of force such memberships confer.

As
with most such books I do not agree with all the good professor’s
prescriptions. Equally, as a valued adviser and loyal friend I know his views
always to be worth taking into account.They are born or years of exacting scholarship reinforced by remorseless
logic and a rare intuition.I commend
this book.It will be of great
assistance to those charged with considering the next chapter in Britain’s
great strategic story.

Thursday, 16 January 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 16 January. You know the parable about the emperor's new clothes. Yesterday, a very senior academic warned me that I was challenging power and that it is dangerous. That comment in a nutshell explains why Europe and European academia is in such a mess and how political leaders so easily avoid reality.

The job of academia is to challenge prescription with analysis and political orthodoxy with rigour. Today there are too many academics examining the irrelevant, too many leaders of think tanks who prevent independent thought to ingratiate themselves with power. The result of the great kow-tow are endless statements of the obvious dressed up as research and think-tank reports that deliberately miss the real point to tell power what it wants to hear. "Do not cut off our funding", the research masses cry. "Tell us what we want to hear then", came the power reply.

At this time of truly momentous change in the world and in Europe the thinking citizen must become the loyal opposition. Indeed, as power shifts inexorably away from Europe to the wider world and away from the citizen to the unelected this is precisely the moment for thinkers to become doers. If not the short-term will trump the long-term, the political will trump the strategic and the power expedient will in time trump liberty.

So sir, I demur from your assertion that I must desist from challenging power. Instead I call on you to break out of the means by which thought is controlled - be it project funding or research assessment frameworks - and return independent thought to its purpose; to challenge orthodoxy.

To mix my parables it is not the job of academia to sup from the table of power but to question the very existence of that table. As T.S. Eliot once wrote, "Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind, Cannot bear too much reality. Time past and time future, What might have been and what has been, Point to one end, which is always present".

If ever there was a time for elite human kind to be forced to face reality it is now. If ever there was a place it is Europe. And, if neither academia nor think-tanks take risk then power is merely rubber-stamped. And, if institutes of inquisition retreat into the little questions then who is answering the big ones?

Wednesday, 15 January 2014

You sought my view on the politics of European security and defence
and how they relate to Britain and European federalism.As you know my main concern with a future Federal
Europe is that it would concentrate too much power in the hands of an
unaccountable few and thus makes the distance between me the citizen and the
elite intolerably wide for any entity that could reasonably call itself
democratic. It is also my firm belief that we are far closer than most people
realise to crossing a political Rubicon towards some form of federalism.In reality the British are faced with a
simple reality if they stay within the EU; they must sooner or later join the
Eurozone.Here is why.

The Federalist
Danger: Britain’s future EU membership dominates the air waves in the UK. And
yet precisely because of that London wilfully refuses to recognise the federalist
danger and focuses instead on the importance of preserving the single market
and Britain’s access to it. This conceit pretends that somehow the market can be kept distinct
from the EU’s wider or rather deeper political development.

What Comes Next:The critical issue in the coming crisis will
be one of timing.Britain will not join
the euro in the next decade or so which is precisely the critical period for
Eurozone deepening.It would be
political suicide for a British prime minister to even suggest membership.And yet for the Eurozone to survive and to
eventually have any chance of enriching its citizens (and not punish us as is
currently the case) then further integration must place.

Alternatives to
Deeper Integration: The only alternative to a neo-federal
system would be a form of zollverein built
around a German neo-empire administered by Brussels.There are some in Berlin who find that
attractive.Or, rather they want such a
neo-empire to take on the appearance of Union. There is of course a third option.The Eurozone collapses and the EU eventually
picks itself up from the wreckage and goes back to the British view of Europe
as a single market.That to say the
least is highly unlikely given the political capital invested in project euro.

The Current British Position:The
"Balance of Competences" review purports to assess the cost and
benefits of Britain’s EU membership. It is at best a snapshot of today (and
a biased one at that) designed solely to ease the here-and-now political
dilemma of a weak prime minister. As such the study is indicative of a London
that routinely confuses strategy with politics because it makes no effort to consider
the implications of the coming structural changes in the EU for the future
politics, society, governance AND economy of Britain.

British ‘Strategy’: You suggest that
London is seeking to divide Europe. Sadly, London today is so politically split
and so strategically myopic that it is incapable of such vision.One critique of London in my new book,
Little Britain? Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power is the inability of
the elite Establishment to see the big picture and think grand strategically. As
such London is in denial about what is happening here on the Continent.

Britain’s Options: Whether the EU is
empire or union it is hard to see a place for Britain in it unless the British
effectively surrender their view of the EU as market.This would at a stroke render their position
outside the defining Eurozone ridiculous.To my mind in such circumstances Britain should leave the EU particularly
as the only alternative would be the permanent marginalisation and
minority-status of Britain within the EU and a 'balance' between costs
of membership and benefits that would become politically untenable.These pressures will increase not decrease by the
time of any planned 2017 referendum.

The Twist: What I am already
detecting in the parliamentary debate over the EU Referendum Bill is preparation
for surrender dressed up as reform.The
simple truth is that much of the London Establishment is prepared to keep
Britain in the EU at any cost even if that means the effective abandonment of
British sovereignty.Consequently a
great manipulation has been underway in London for some time and which is
supported by government and their fellow travellers in big business who simply
want to keen to head off the coming political crisis. Pro-EU big business does not care about democracy at all
and simply wants access to large markets via large pools of cheap labour.The essential conceit of this group is to
pretend that Britain’s EU membership is solely about economic interests and
that such interests are served by Britain's continued membership.A race is thus underway to maintain the
manipulation before the reality of deeper EU integration becomes apparent to an
instinctively Euro-sceptic British people.

Implications for
Europe’s Future Security and Defence:The question for Europe's future security and defence
then becomes existential. Should Europe's future security and defence be organised
exclusively around and within the EU (and by extension France and Germany) or should
another mechanism/framework (NATO?) be created which is more reflective of political realism
rather than EU idealism?France faces a
paradox.France’s partner of choice
Germany has concluded that if its leadership of Europe is to be legitimate
Berlin cannot be a military power.Indeed, the more economic and political influence Berlin enjoys the less
military influence Berlin is likely to seek.

France and Britain:France needs Britain and Britain needs France.However, for a new pragmatic settlement to be
reached Britain and France must be...pragmatic. However, (and I say this as a
genuine friend of France) for that to happen France must recognise Britain’s
legitimate concerns about a quasi-federal Europe, at least until the British
cave in.That might appear to contradict
what I have said above but the politics of today mean that no British leader
can any more afford to be seen to equate Britain’s future defence with a
European Army than call for Britain’s membership of the euro.These tensions existed in the 1998 St Malo
Declaration and have never gone away.Indeed, unless London and Paris put aside issues of federalism in
defence and consider together Europe's politically realist interests in the
global security context then I fear that however important on paper strategic,
security and defence co-operation between Britain and France it will be limited
and iterative.

Next Steps: Four things will
soon happen: a) The current phoney war over inevitably treaty change will end. This will probably happen after this year’s European elections because many in the elite
still seem to believe the way to ‘Europe’ is to deceive Europeans about the
objective, particularly in Germany; b) Eurozone states will finally have to
face up to the consequences of integration for their sovereignty and peoples
and confront these issues honestly; c) As this change will necessarily
happen before any substantive political shift in the UK and because we British
are forced into a permanent minority in the EU by those states dependent on
German largesse London will no longer be able to fudge this issue with the
British people; and d) London will then be faced with a simple choice -
surrender or leave.

Conclusion: Further Eurozone political
integration is inevitable and will inevitably lead to critical loss of national
sovereignty, more federalism and in time an EU and Eurozone that are to all
intent and purpose one and the same thing. We could (and I stress could) then be on the
road to the kind of bureaucratic dictatorship of the kind Tocqueville warned
against with few if any meaningful checks and balances on an over-mighty
bureaucracy. This slide towards a form of bureaucratic autocracy would be accelerated and confirmed by a fig-leaf European
Parliament made up of MEPs who enjoy either power or substantive legitimacy. Whilst such an idea might be
attractive to some born of the Colbertian tradition it is utter anathema to those
of us who descend from Locke and Mill.

Therefore, the current political situation in the EU is unsustainable and some form of federalism is on the way because the EU and its most committed backers cannot help themselves. But here's the rub; without root and branch reform such federalism will lock in political aspic an uncompetitive Europe in a hyper-competitive world. A federal Europe will thus mean a decadent and in time doomed Europe and as such will be self-defeating.

Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Alphen,
Netherlands, 15 January.My books are a
bit like London buses. One waits a year or so for one and then two come along
at once. Last week I published my book Little
Britain?Twenty-First Century Strategy
for a Middling European Power. This week the paperback edition of my
enormous Oxford Handbook of War has
been published by Oxford University Press.

The
Oxford Handbook of War is
unique.My fourth book (of five) and my
second for Oxford University, my alma mater, it took five years to research,
plan, structure, prepare, write and edit.It is certainly no pot boiler being almost 600 pages in length and some
45 chapters the Handbook considers war in all its forms – strategic,
historical, political, military, social and economic.Indeed the Handbook is a helicopter study of
war as a phenomenon.

The
Handbook was a joint collaboration with my old friend and co-conspirator
Professor Yves Boyer of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.Who says the English and French never get
on?‘Research’ of course occasioned many
hours sipping excellent French wine in Yves’s wonderful home overlooking the
Loire Valley.Yes, I suffer for my
art.Vive, l’entente intellectuelle!

In
preparing the Handbook Yves and I were supported by over forty leading
thinkers, policy-makers and leading civilian and military practitioners from
across the globe - Brazil, China, Europe, India and the United States.Indeed, the Handbook is graced by chapters Chiefs
of Defence Staff, as well as a former US Ambassador to NATO and NATO’s Deputy
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.The
Handbook was nominated for the prestigious Duke of Westminster’s Medal for
Military Literature, my second book to be so honoured.

So
that’s the plug.Now, let me offer those
of you contemplating the writing of a book a few words of advice, particularly
as I have just enjoyed the delicious pain of writing yet another.One does not write a book, one lives it.One endures every comma, every word, every
scintilla of a book – a word here or is it there?A book is a solitary affair and yet it is a
movie, an epic involving a cast of thousands.And, like a movie one needs to believe, to put one’s heart and soul into
‘the project’ for many years before one sees the final cut...and one rarely
becomes a millionaire.

The
active support of an excellent publisher is vital as is the commitment of a lot
of very busy senior people.The support
of my publisher Oxford University Press was invaluable, particularly Dominic
Byatt, Elizabeth Suffling and Sarah Parker. Thanks guys!

So,
if you want to understand war then I humbly recommend a copy of the paperback Handbook
because as Plato once so poignantly put it, “only the dead have seen the end of
war”.Sadly, there is nothing I can see
of this world that convinces me that war has been cast as a purely academic
pursuit now the sole preserve of dusty historians with big titles.Nor is there glory in war.Yes, individual stories of daring-do shine
through because war creates extreme experiences in otherwise ordinary
lives.Perhaps that is why so many (including
me) are obsessive sports fans.

War is
dark, cold, and often boring, rent by sudden moments of terrifying, terrible terror which
test for the instant but scar for life, leaving nightmares in many who then 'live' life unsure of where a mind’s day
ends and night begins. Warriors of modern democracies walk amongst the society they fight to protect often made distant from society by the very act of protection they offered. The soldier pays an enormous price for the duty s/he owes. Indeed, as anyone
beyond the moronic who has ever had any experience of war will tell you, there
is no glory in war simply suffering for a purpose.

Equally,
it is utterly naïve to believe wars need not be fought nor will be fought again.Be it the human condition, the shaky
distinction between power and pauperism that humans create or simply that what
is to come cannot be tolerated then war will continue to lurk amongst us all.

That
is why Yves and I set out on this ambitious project; because war is important. Yes, the book seeks to prevent war through the
better understanding of it.However, piety is for theologians; if
war is to be fought it must be won and hopefully by those on the side of good. Only then will war be seen as an exception to the human rule not a tombstone on it.

The
Oxford Handbook of War 2014; in all good bookshops now at a very reasonable price!

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.